Historically, the pneumatic tire has been fabricated as a laminate structure of generally toroidal shape having beads, a tread, belt reinforcement and a carcass. The manufacturing technologies employed for the most part involve the successive assembling of multiple tire components onto a tire building drum wherein each tire component is cut to length and spliced on the drum. A typical tire may comprise about six splices spaced about the tire.
Recent advances in the first stage of tire subassembly construction involve the utilization of a single unvulcanized laminated structure, such as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,762,740 and 5,746,101, which are hereby incorporated by reference. Instead of multiple tire components being applied to a tire building drum in a successive manner, a single laminate structure is cut to the appropriate length and then applied to the tire building drum, wherein the ends of the laminated structure are spliced together. It is desired then that the ends of the laminated structure be cut at a low skive angle, because it allows for a butt splice or a splice wherein a few cords overlap, resulting in a stronger splice.
If the laminate structure includes a reinforcement layer such as reinforced ply containing closely spaced reinforcement cords, it is an engineering challenge to be able to cut through the laminate structure to the desired length without cutting through any of the cords, especially at low skive angles. The cut must be made between the parallel-aligned reinforcing cords, without cutting through any of the reinforcement cords. This can be an extremely difficult task to accomplish, because the reinforcement cords are typically very closely spaced, on the order of 30 cords/in. An ideal cutting method and apparatus should also be able to make cuts at low angles relative to the plane of the elastomeric sheet being cut in a rapid and reliable manner.